Deliberately Engaging the Culture to defend the dignity and intrinsic value of each person beginning at conception. Helping ProLife people understand, answer, rebut and refute the Culture of Death's false argument.

The Manhattan Declaration

A Call of Christian Conscience

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

the sanctity of human life

the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife

the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Post navigation

11 Responses to The Manhattan Declaration

Thank you, DE, for your courageous efforts here. And don’t be discouraged by people like OP. I’ve had some run-ins w/ him, too. He’s not beyond hope (“where there’s life there’s hope”-right?!) but I’m not too sure he’s worth your time. He doesn’t have normal and/or healthy thoughts, feelings, ideals, principles…you name it.
Keep up the good work!
[Thank you. Let’s all keep praying for the individuals like OC and the entire culture. – Matt]

[Wow I hardly know where to begin. I am actually excited that we can discuss this some more. I would like to help you understand your error and learn some more about your view so I can work on some common ground. My reach goal will be for you to change the name – and mission – of your own blog.

Why don’t we start with this again:
Define “Murderer.” Explain sufficiently why anyone who defends life is a “murderer.” Give us some serious “If A and B then C.”
(Here’s where we can diverge from our previous foolishness.) THEN you listen to some answers. Hopefully I can provides some good content for us to discuss.
Ready? Good! Your move.
Matt your one-person DE staff]

…(W)e don’t need to understand WHY. The fact that all right-to-lifers are murderers is REVEALED DOCTRINE, straight from the Supernatural Entitity.
[So there is no means to debate your RELIGIOUS viewpoint?
You have no support for your use of a word “murderer” that means something different to the rest of us. Funny isn’t it?
It appears that the rationalist prolifer is able to support their view – not with revealed doctrine but with rationalist information and logic – better than those of your religion.
What CAN we discuss?
– DE]

You’re asking me what we can discuss? OK, I’m still waiting to learn whom you would punish for abortion if you were writing the ban you work so hard to bring about, into law, and, how you would punish him/her. Let’s discuss that!
[You’ll continue to wait. That would be the subject for just and reasonable laws established by our political system. You have rejected the legitimacy of political systems; so that conversation with you would be futile. (I acknowledge you have not been properly diagnosed by a licensed philosopher but I’m pretty sure you’re an anarchist.)

Instead lets discuss the definition of the word “murderer” and how we can stop you from using it.

You ask, how to stop me from using the word “murderer” to apply to right-to-lifers? Well for starters, it would help if right-to-lifers would discontinue the current pattern of answering every significant pro-choice victory with murderous terrorism against abortion workers.

[OC, 1. no Right to Life person has ever committed murderous terrorism against anyone. By definition. 2. The incidence of violence by those who oppose abortion by these illegitimate and immoral means is still 1/100th of that incidence by Abortion “rights” folks. – DE]

After we accomplish that, then we can work on purging our culture of the pernicious idea that government may EVER force a pregnant woman to grow her pregnancy, and to give birth against her will. I will stop calling right-to-lifers murderers when they stop trying to inflict childbirth upon women by government force. (But then, of course, they won’t be right-to-lifers any more!)

[OC, You don’t “inflict childbirth.” Your ridiculous world view makes further discussion unlikely. Further this ridiculous viewpoint still supports my view not yours. “Government” as some evil third-party doesn’t do things; we the people do things with the rules of civil society as our tool. -DE]

I propose the “My-Body Amendment”. It will read: any pregnant woman who desires an abortion is entitled to get one, and to kill anyone who attempts to prevent her from getting one, including policemen, soldiers, and politicians, without warning.

Here’s a topical subject: you call for marriage to be restricted to one man plus one woman.

QUESTION: Why should government have anything AT ALL to say about marriage? Slaves need their masters to validate, and define, their marriages. Not free people. I am not my government’s slave, and I can define for myself the meaning of any marriage I may enter, just as I would define the terms of ANY contract.

I say marriages should be defined by the participants therein, not by government. Then we won’t have any of these problems around the question of which marriages should be recognized and which not, whether banning polygamy is a violation of Muslims’ and Mormons’ religious freedom, etc.

Are you so insecure in your religious belief that you cannot have your Church solemnize your marriages without Uncle Sam’s stamp of approval??? Is your God unable to work His will without support from Caesar?

The idea that government should decide which marriages are valid is a holdover from the days when the Church and the government were the same. Not appropriate in the Twenty-First Century.

[OC, you have it backwards. YOU are asking – rather stamping your little feet – so that the government will “let” you use the word “marriage” for something that isn’t marriage at all. True marriage is a societal good and in any goverment other than anarchy the goverment can and should regulate and protect the good. I’m not asking the “gov’mint” to do anything to legitimize marriage. Marriage IS legitimate and DOES work. To redefine it to suit activists or to undefine it to suit anarchists hurts society. – DE]

That’s exactly what muslims say about muslim terrorists. “They’re not really muslims because islam is peace, by definition!”

It flops for muslims, and it flops for you.

Moving on: you say government doesn’t inflict childbirth on women. That’s true today, because USA is pro-choice. If, however, government were to prevent a woman who wanted an abortion from getting one, then that government WOULD BE inflicting childbirth upon her.

It’s like, I see that a piano is falling towards me. I try to get out of the way. You block me, and becuase I can’t get out of the way, the piano kills me. Then you say “I didn’t kill OC; it was the piano!”

And I am still not an anarchist; I am an ADVOCATE OF LIMITED GOVERNMENT. You know, like the Founding Fathers, and the folks who signed Magna Carta. You, I assume, object to the Chinese “one-child-per-family” law. Does that make you an anarchist? No.

You say “government can and should protect and regulate the good”. Well, sobriety is good. So should government re-institute prohibition of alcohol? If not, why not?

Almost forgot–you say right-to-lifist is only 1/100 of the violence committed by pro-choicers? So far, pro-choicers have murdered ZERO right-to-lifers, bombed ZERO right-to-lifist workplaces, etc.

PLEEEEZ try to argue on a higher level. I already spend too much time explaining things to kids.

And I’m not proposing to “re-define” marriage. I’m proposing to DE-define it, and let the participants do the defining in future.

Email us!

deliberateengagement@gmail.com

Search

See our (evil twin) sister blog

Actually don't bother.
I'd like to apologize for the behavior of certain bloggers who don't agree with us. They have gone quite out of their way to accuse and vilify all pro-life workers. One has been so prompted that she has created an Anti- Deliberate Engagement blog.
Its headline is: Deliberate Enslavement? and its address is: http:// prochoicechicky. wordpress.com/
We suppose that parody is sort of like imitation and we should be complimented? However this is more "attack" than "parody."